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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224732">if you can forgive, forgive, forgive (when i say brooklyn)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/srididdledeedee/pseuds/srididdledeedee'>srididdledeedee</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Catholic Steve Rogers, Food, Getting Together, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, almost a concerning amount of detail regarding new york city, and his foil, infinity war and endgame just like. don't exist to me, like i know it's 2020 i KNOW, not a kink or anything but like there' a LOT of food</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:41:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224732</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/srididdledeedee/pseuds/srididdledeedee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not going to stop eating crackers,” Bucky says.  He feels like he has to say it.  Steve can’t control what snacks he eats, and if Bucky wants to eat nothing but Wheat Thins and Ritz crackers and egg and onion matzo between meals, then he will.  That’s not Steve’s choice to make.</p><p>“I’m not asking you to.  I’m just saying that you need to eat more than that,” Steve says.  “I’m trying to expand your palette.  They’ve got nearly everything here, you know, and we’re going to try it all.” </p><p> </p><p>Or, the one where Steve catches Bucky up on nearly eighty years of pop culture through lunch dates.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>189</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>if you can forgive, forgive, forgive (when i say brooklyn)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Wow!  I started this at the beginning of the summer of 2019, after texting my good friend @sapphea something along the lines of "i'm not trying to start a new WIP about steve and bucky but can you imagine a story about steve and bucky where steve introduces bucky to all of this food they didn't have in the 30s and 40s"</p><p>and, well.  here we are.</p><p>all the restaurants included here exist in new york, and i've been to most of them myself!  The last restaurant in this story unfortunately recently closed (a week ago as of 03/19/2020), which was very sad for me to learn, as it was where my late great-aunts used to take my family when we would visit them as kids</p><p>the location for stark tower was the result of a lot of research--rn, the address is the home of a lot of construction, but based on images from movies, I think thats approximately where it would be located in Manhattan.</p><p>(also take this excerpt I wrote and deleted, for obvious reasons.  It certainly gave me a laugh)</p><p> “About three things Bucky was absolutely sure: First, Steve was the ugly Captain America.  Second, there was a part of him--and he didn’t know how dominant that part might be--that enjoyed being the former Captain.  And third, Bucky was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Stark Tower, 76th Floor, 33 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 10017 </strong>
</p><p>“The food’s different.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam looks up from his book and raises his eyebrows at Steve. He’s become used to these unprompted statements, and he decides to open this can of worms. “That so?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah,” Steve says. His voice is quiet—it’s the intonation he uses whenever he talks about his past, and what’s changed since he went into the ice. “People still ask me what I think about technology today, and medicine, and film, and music, but they never talk to me about food. It’s one of those things that people don’t really think about as something that changes, that evolves. They think food’s just always been food.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam bookmarks his page, and closes his book. “And what did you find so different?”<br/>
<br/>
Steve smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and it’s more wistful than truly happy. “Everything.”<br/>
<br/>
“Everything, huh?” Sam says.<br/>
<br/>
“When I first got here, I caught up with a lot of pop culture in restaurants. I read all of 1984 in a diner. I watched most of The Godfather in a pub. I listened to Scenes from an Italian Restaurant in an Italian restaurant.” Steve shakes his head. “And every time I tried something new, I was surprised. Every single time. It’s so much more than I was used to.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam can sense Steve is building up to something, and he thinks he knows exactly what. He’s doing this more and more often now—he rambles about his troubles in adjusting to the present, lulling whoever he’s speaking to into a false sense of security, and then pulls the rug out from under them with that one little phrase.<br/>
<br/>
“Do you think Bucky’s having a rough time adjusting?”<br/>
<br/>
<em>There it is.</em><br/>
<br/>
Steve’s far from a one trick pony, but he’s smart enough to know when a tactic works, and when it works, he keeps using it. And by God, does this tactic work.<br/>
<br/>
Sam blames Tony. Tony was Steve’s first test subject, and he’s so averse to dealing with any and all emotional turmoil that the first time Steve brought it up, Tony just waved his hand and muttered, “Do whatever the hell you want, man,” before descending to his workshop to engineer his feelings away. Tony might as well have saluted and said “Please guilt the rest of our friends any time you want to speak to or about Bucky, Captain Rogers. It was an honor to demonstrate just how effective your strategy is. Godspeed.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam prides himself on having more of an emotional backbone than Tony, though that’s not hard. Still, Steve’s one of his closest friends, and when he turns his sad, sad eyes on Sam, he can feel himself slipping. He sighs, and rubs his face. “Of course I think Bucky’s having a rough time. The trial decision was only a month ago, and I don’t think I’ve seen him leave the tower since then.”<br/>
<br/>
“He’s left the tower,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“That’s not what matters, what matters is nobody <em>saw</em> him. He doesn’t want to be seen when he goes out.”<br/>
<br/>
“Can you blame him?”<br/>
<br/>
“Steve, you’ve gotta stop putting words in my mouth,” Sam says. “What are you really trying to ask me?”<br/>
<br/>
Steve doesn’t answer. He hunches himself over, hands clasped together, and vaguely shrugs.<br/>
<br/>
“You want to take the guy out to lunch, then take the guy out to lunch. You don’t have to ask my permission,” Sam says. “I’m not your keeper, and neither is anyone else.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve hunches himself even further over, if that’s possible. “I know.”<br/>
<br/>
“He seems better. He’s healing,” Sam continues. “I’m sure if you asked him to go out for an hour or two, he wouldn’t refuse.”<br/>
<br/>
“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?” Steve asks, and he sounds absolutely miserable. It’s the kind of sorrow that Sam can feel in his own feet, as if all the sadness from Steve dripped onto the floor and now Sam is splashing around in puddles of it.<br/>
<br/>
Sam reaches over and places his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t. Full stop. He’s in control, Steve. He can say no to you.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve nods, looking at the floor. He doesn’t say anything.<br/>
<br/>
“He’s better than you give him credit for,” Sam says, and he cracks a smile. “He’s got enough autonomy to be an ass to Tony.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve laughs softly. “That’s true.”<br/>
<br/>
“You gonna ask him to lunch, then?”<br/>
<br/>
Steve un-hunches himself, and the small smile stays on his face. “I just might. He needs to expand his palette beyond Ritz crackers.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam evidently makes a face, because Steve bursts out laughing. “No, I know, it’s bad. He can’t get enough of the stuff.”<br/>
<br/>
“I might have to take him out to lunch if you chicken out,” Sam says, only half-joking. “Ritz crackers, huh?”<br/>
<br/>
“Ritz crackers.”<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>Stark Tower, 68th Floor, 33 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 10017</strong><br/>
<br/>
Bucky doesn’t <em>just</em> eat Ritz crackers, but it’s a near thing. He’s talked to Clint about it, because Clint is the one who walked into his room and saw the many, many red boxes strewn about, and demanded answers.<br/>
<br/>
<em>You have a problem,</em> he signs, half-scowling and half-grinning. It’s an interesting expression, one that Bucky doesn’t think he could replicate. Very Clint.<br/>
<br/>
<em>I don’t,</em> Bucky signs back. He doesn’t remember when he picked up ASL, and doesn’t want to think about why he needed it. He tries to not look a gift horse in the mouth.<br/>
<br/>
Clint is the one who takes him to one of the local twenty-four hour stores at two in the morning and convinces him to expand his palette. It doesn’t expand very far, but now instead of just Ritz, Bucky also eats Wheat Thins, oyster crackers, and matzo.<br/>
<br/>
<em>They serve it in a box now?</em> He signs to Clint in the store, pointing at the Streit’s on the shelf. <em>We had to make it ourselves, you know.<br/>
<br/>
They definitely had Streit’s in the 40s. The history of the company’s on the back,</em> Clint signs, and Bucky shrugs.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Not that we could afford it,</em> he signs back. <em>Look at this. I could buy a lifetime supply of this stuff nowadays.<br/>
<br/>
The wonders of the future,</em> Clint signs.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky doesn’t like going outside the tower that much, but with Clint, it’s bearable. Clint makes jokes and distracts Bucky from the looks he gets out the street, even as late as it is. Clint smile-scowls at his snack choices.<br/>
<br/>
When Steve walks into his room, he just looks sad. Bucky isn’t sure if it’s because of the overwhelming amount of cracker boxes or because of Bucky himself. He eats his Ritz crackers, his Wheat Thins, his oyster crackers. He chews on the matzo and tries to remember how his mother used to make it. He avoids Steve’s sad eyes and focuses on the loud crunching his snacks make when he chews them.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky teaches himself how to use one of Stark’s vacuums, because his snacks also create a huge mess, and he thinks the only thing sadder than living in a room full of various cracker boxes would be living in a room full of cracker boxes and crumbs.<br/>
<br/>
It’s kind of bad.<br/>
<br/>
It’s kind of really bad.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky continues to eat his crackers.<br/>
<br/>
Steve walks in one day and Bucky can tell that he’s got something on his mind, because Steve walks differently when he’s got something on his mind. Bucky’s not sure if that’s a memory from before, or if it’s something that he’s picked up on since he started living in the tower. It’s funny, though—Steve walks with his head slightly ahead of the rest of his body, like whatever he’s thinking about is the sole factor moving him from one place to another. He looks like some sort of marionette, with a string attached squarely in the middle of his forehead. Bucky snorts, and Steve furrows his brow.<br/>
<br/>
“Something funny?” Steve asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Just you, punk,” Bucky says. He can remember calling Steve a punk back when he was small, but that’s not why he says it now. He says it because it always puts at least a little smile on Steve’s face, and that’s all Bucky can ask for.<br/>
<br/>
“Oh.” Steve looks lost, and glances down at the box in Bucky’s hand. “What’ve you got there?”<br/>
<br/>
“Streit’s matzo,” Bucky answers. “I don’t know if you noticed, but they’ve got flavored stuff now. Matzo covered in chocolate. Egg and onion.”<br/>
<br/>
“I noticed.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky ignores Steve’s comment and taps the box. “Look at this—not even Kosher for Passover, right there on the front. What’s the point?” He reaches in, takes out a piece, and breaks it in half. A flurry of crumbs sprinkles to the ground, and he takes a small bite out of his half. “It’s good, though. I eat it.” He offers the other half to Steve. “You should try some.”<br/>
<br/>
“Bucky.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky ignores him. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. Store bought can’t possibly be as good as Ma used to make it. Well, that’s where you’d be wrong—it is just as dry and hard as homemade matzo, but this one’s got <em>flavor.</em> Yes, sir, you heard me, flavor! Ma’s matzo was just dry and hard, but this here is like biting into semi-spiced plaster. Nothing like it used to be.” He takes a pause to take another bite, and he laughs hollowly. “I mean, I assume, seeing as I can’t remember what Ma’s really tasted like.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve has remained quiet for Bucky’s outburst, but he looks pained. “Bucky, you can’t keep living like this.”<br/>
<br/>
“Living like what?” Bucky asks, averting his eyes. He doesn’t want to have this conversation with Steve. “I think this is the happiest I’ve been in years.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve has thoughts on that statement, Bucky can tell—they’re written out on his face, as it morphs from anger to pity to frustration in half a second. Steve doesn’t voice any of them.<br/>
<br/>
“Sam thinks you should go out more,” is what Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“Sam thinks that, does he?” Bucky asks flatly. He bites into the half of the matzo he had offered to Steve.<br/>
<br/>
“You’re holed up in here like a fugitive—”<br/>
<br/>
“I might as well be one,” Bucky interjects, and Steve’s face crumples.<br/>
<br/>
“Oh, Buck, don’t say that,” he whispers, and Bucky would do anything to take the broken look off Steve’s face. “You’re not—you know that you’re not a fugitive. You’re innocent.”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes, I can remember my own trial, Steve,” Bucky says, and that seems to hurt Steve even more. Bucky doesn’t know what to do. He just wants Steve to be happy.<br/>
<br/>
“Will you go out of the tower with me?” Steve asks quietly, and he doesn’t sound nervous, but he is. “Just for a meal. It doesn’t have to be big or fancy. I just can’t sit by and watch you eat crackers for the rest of your life.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky clutches the Streit’s box like it’s a lifeline, and nods.<br/>
<br/>
<em>I’ll do that for you, Steve. All you had to do was ask.</em><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>Corner of Madison Avenue and East 41st Street, New York, New York 10017</strong><br/>
<br/>
“I’m not going to stop eating crackers,” Bucky says. He feels like he has to say it. Steve can’t control what snacks he eats, and if Bucky wants to eat nothing but Wheat Thins and Ritz crackers and egg and onion matzo between meals, then he will. That’s not Steve’s choice to make.<br/>
<br/>
“I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying that you need to eat more than that,” Steve says. “I’m trying to expand your palette. They’ve got nearly everything here, you know, and we’re going to try it all.”<br/>
<br/>
They’re both outside, wearing baseball hats to semi-shield their faces, and Bucky has a sweatshirt on to cover the Weapon. <em>Prosthetic arm,</em> he corrects in his head. Natalia—Natasha—Nat told him that he can’t keep calling it the Weapon, or that’s all he’ll think of it as. It’s his arm. It’s just his arm now.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky feels like every person he sees is staring at them. He wishes he was back in Stark Tower. His mouth is drawn in a grim line, and Steve takes notice of it almost immediately.<br/>
<br/>
“We won’t be out here for very long,” Steve reassures. He doesn’t tell Bucky to relax, and Bucky’s grateful for that. He itches to grab Steve’s arm, to use it as some sort of anchor. He catches himself reaching out, and he shoves his hands deep into his pockets.<br/>
<br/>
They’ve barely walked a block away from Stark Tower when Steve’s face lights up. “Here we are!”<br/>
<br/>
It’s a cart. It’s barely wider than Steve and Bucky standing next to each other, and it’s plastered with images of various hyper-saturated foodstuffs, with a brightly colored awning that hangs maybe eight inches away from the cart itself. It smells smoky, and sweet, and a bit like gasoline. It’s almost too much for Bucky to handle.<br/>
<br/>
Steve steps forward. “Two hot dogs and a pretzel, please.” He glances at the bin of sweet-smelling whatever-they-are, and he adds, “And might as well add in some roasted chestnuts too, please.”<br/>
<br/>
He pays for the goods, and hands a hot dog to Bucky. Bucky looks at Steve, then at the hot dog, then at Steve again.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s Kosher beef,” Steve says, as if that’s why Bucky is confused.<br/>
<br/>
“There were hot dogs when we were growing up. I remember them,” Bucky says as Steve takes a big bite. “I’m pretty sure I’ve had a hot dog before.”<br/>
<br/>
“It’s been awhile, though, hasn’t it?” Steve says with his mouth full, and Christ, Bucky feels himself smiling. He can nearly forget how watched he feels in the open.<br/>
<br/>
“I guess it has been awhile,” he says.<br/>
<br/>
Steve swallows, and wipes the corner of his mouth with his hand. “Do you want to head back to Stark Tower?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky nods. He unwraps the hot dog as they walk, and takes a bite.<br/>
<br/>
If he was pretty sure that he had a hot dog before, now he’s completely sure, because what he just ate was so different from the taste that he faintly remembers. The bun is sweeter, the meat is richer, and the overwhelming flavor is enough to make him stop dead in his tracks.<br/>
<br/>
Steve walks a few paces before noticing Bucky is not by his side, and then he turns around. His eyes widen with worry, and he rushes back to Bucky, shaking his arm.<br/>
<br/>
“C’mon, Buck, you’ve gotta keep moving,” he urges, and that shakes Bucky out of his head. “You good?”<br/>
<br/>
“I—” Bucky looks at the hot dog. “It’s. Not what I expected.”<br/>
<br/>
“Come on, let’s go,” Steve says, and it takes longer than it should for Bucky to realize that Steve is still touching his arm. “You like it?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky nods, because he’s not sure what else he can do. It’s so much more than he was expecting. He’s a little embarrassed that a simple hot dog all but knocked him off his feet.<br/>
<br/>
“Why does it—how does it taste so different?” He asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Fresher meat. Preservatives in the buns,” Steve answers. “I was pretty much as surprised as you that something like a hot dog could change so much.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky takes another bite. It’s warm and comforting. He tries to not think about Steve’s hand, and how warm and comforting it is as well.<br/>
<br/>
“You’re going to love the pretzel and chestnuts,” Steve grins, and sure enough, he’s right. The pretzel is just as salty as any of Bucky’s crackers, but richer and warmer and softer. The chestnuts aren’t as sweet as they smelled on the street, but Bucky likes them anyway. They have an odd texture, softer than Bucky was expecting, and an earthy taste. They taste almost more like meat than a nut.<br/>
<br/>
Steve looks absolutely overjoyed that Bucky ate the food he bought. “You’ll eat more than crackers, now?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky smiles. “As long as you’re paying, Rogers.”<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>32 Spring Street, New York, New York 10012</strong><br/>
<br/>
“Pizza isn’t <em>Italian,”</em> Steve mutters to himself. “Pizza is pizza.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve is sitting at Tony’s table, furiously scribbling away in a little notebook, when Tony walks in. Steve shouldn’t be surprised to see Tony, seeing as it’s his building, but he is.<br/>
<br/>
“Whatcha working on there, Cap?” Tony asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Not the Captain anymore,” Steve reminds him, not looking away from his notebook. “That title goes to Sam.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony shrugs. “What am I supposed to do, think of new nicknames for you?”<br/>
<br/>
“You could, I don’t know, call me by my given name.”<br/>
<br/>
“Old Cap,” Tony tries. “Cap 1.0.”<br/>
<br/>
“Tony.”<br/>
<br/>
“Less Sexy Cap.”<br/>
<br/>
“Tony!”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m kidding!” Tony says in a tone of voice that says he certainly was not kidding. “Chill out—oh, ice joke. Nice one, Tony.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve sighs and stands up, preparing to relocate, but Tony says, “Wait wait wait! I do want to know what you’re working on, and I swear I won’t bother you if you tell me.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve gives him an unimpressed look.<br/>
<br/>
“I’ll bother you less,” Tony amends. “C’mon, tell me. I want to see what you’re scribbling away at.”<br/>
<br/>
“You’re like a child, you know?” Steve says, but he caves. “It’s a list of foods I want to introduce Bucky to.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony pulls a face. “I was under the impression he still didn’t like leaving the tower.”<br/>
<br/>
“He doesn’t, not really,” Steve says. “I’m hoping the food will be an incentive.”<br/>
<br/>
“Huh,” Tony says. “I didn’t realize he was such a foodie.”<br/>
<br/>
“He isn’t,” Steve says, and Tony pulls a face that Steve pointedly ignores. He goes back to writing in the notebook. “I was just worried about him eating crackers all the time.”<br/>
<br/>
“That’s been<em> him?”</em> Tony asks, and he looks legitimately surprised. “I thought it was Clint.”<br/>
<br/>
“I think Clint’s been encouraging it, but, yes, it’s mostly been Bucky,” Steve sighs.<br/>
<br/>
“Is he, like, okay?” Tony asks. “Because ten to twelve cracker boxes in the recycling every week does not a mentally sound person make.”<br/>
<br/>
“He’s—” Steve begins, then finds he can’t end the sentence honestly. “I don’t know. Some days seem better than others.”<br/>
<br/>
“He still going to therapy?” Tony asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah.” Steve leaves it at that. It’s only been a few years since he escaped—broke free of Hydra, and therapy was a huge part of his healing process. Is a huge part of his healing process. It’s harder for Steve to remember that Bucky still isn’t quite all there, still has huge gaps in his memory. It took Steve a long time to accept that his Bucky may never be quite all there.<br/>
<br/>
“That’s good,” Tony says. “Therapy rocks, dude. Take it from me.” He flashes a smile, but it’s empty. “‘Course, me and Red October have different issues, but therapy’s therapy. You’ve gone before, right?”<br/>
<br/>
“Once or twice,” Steve says. “I used to go to the big meetings at the VA with Sam when we still lived in D.C. Here, I haven’t—nothing felt right. And I don’t think I need it that much, right now, anyway.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony drums his fingers on his arm. “If you ever do need it again, just let me know. I went through God knows how many therapists, and Pepper probably has their numbers in some cabinet or notebook somewhere.” He grins. “And speaking of notebooks, let me see what you’ve got there!”<br/>
<br/>
Steve allows Tony to take the notebook, and he glances through it quickly. “All good stuff. Oh, add shawarma, that’s a classic. Sushi, too.” He looks up at Steve. “Injera?”<br/>
<br/>
“It’s Ethiopian. I tried it in D.C.; I think Bucky would like it. I’m sure there’s a place here that serves it,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“Oh, definitely.” Tony tosses the notebook back at him. “Good luck on your lunch rendezvous, Less Sexy Cap. You have my blessing.”<br/>
<br/>
“Don’t want it, don’t need it,” Steve calls after him as he walks away. Sam’s words stuck with him.<br/>
<br/>
Steve comes to the conclusion that yes, Italian and pizza are two entirely different things, and that Bucky needs to be introduced to both separately. Pizza comes first, because Bucky seems skittish enough in the anonymity of a walking crowd—Steve isn’t going to subject him to a real restaurant until Bucky gives him some sort of go-ahead.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky gives him the same look that he gave Steve when Steve handed him a hot dog. “I’ve had pizza, and not in the 30s. Stark orders pizza all the time.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve just smiles. “I’m well aware of that. Tony is a traitor to the city as a whole—too much time on the West Coast. No, we’re getting <em>real</em> pizza.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky snorts. “Whatever you say.”<br/>
<br/>
He’s less nervous on his second trip out of the tower in the daytime, though Steve can still see him tensing up when anyone’s gaze lingers too long on the pair of them. Steve does his best to distract him—they’ve got a long walk down to Spring Street from Midtown, and he wants Bucky to be as comfortable as possible. “So. The city’s changed a lot, huh?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky blinks. “I guess.” He looks at the ground. “I think what surprised me the most is what <em>didn’t</em> change.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve looks at Bucky. He has Tony’s baseball hat on again, the black one with MIT in red lettering on the front, the one that Tony calls “well-loved” and Steve used to call “scruffy” until Bucky started wearing it. His hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and it’s curlier than Steve remembers. He supposes it never got the chance to be that curly when Bucky had it short. “Like what?”<br/>
<br/>
“Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Met Life Tower,” Bucky lists.<br/>
<br/>
“The Met Life Tower is a hotel now,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah, but the building’s still there,” Bucky says. “Not to mention the Brooklyn Bridge—she’s sturdier than I gave her credit for. The subway’s bigger than it used to be, but it was around when we were.”<br/>
<br/>
“Tony didn’t know that,” Steve says. “He thought I would be astonished by the existence of this magical underground train.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky laughs, and abruptly says, “Stark doesn’t like me.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve doesn’t know how to respond to that. “That’s not true,” he protests weakly.<br/>
<br/>
“No, it is,” Bucky says firmly. “He likes you enough to tolerate me, but he doesn’t like me.” His brow furrows. “He wants me to like him, though. Stark wants everyone to like him.”<br/>
<br/>
“Do you?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky makes a non-committal noise. “I don’t <em>dislike</em> him. I live in his building. I don’t know what I’d do if he hadn’t let us—me—stay there.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve doesn’t comment on the “us.” “Tony’s a decent guy. His heart’s in the right place, even if his brain takes a while to catch up.”<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t care if he likes me or not,” Bucky says. “I do like his hat, though. I’m keeping it.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve and Bucky reach Spring Street remarkably quickly, and Steve guides them inside Lombardi’s. They’re seated with a minimum of raised eyebrows. Bucky pulls his hat down lower and brings the menu he’s given higher, so Steve can only see a sliver of his face. The sliver is telling enough that Steve can tell Bucky is beginning to feel overwhelmed.<br/>
<br/>
“Hey, hey,” Steve says softly. “It’s alright. What’s the matter?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky shakes his head.<br/>
<br/>
“Do you want to leave?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky pauses, and shakes his head again. “It’s just. A lot.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve reaches across the table and pushes the menu down with his hand, revealing Bucky’s face. His jaw is clenched, and his eyes are flitting about. “Hey, look at me.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky’s eyes lock with his, and Steve’s breath catches in his throat. “Just trust me.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky nods. A waiter walks over, and Steve orders a large cheese pizza for them to split. He all but pries the menu from Bucky and gives it to the only slightly-concerned looking waiter.<br/>
<br/>
“This place was built in 1905, according to their sign,” Steve says conversationally. “Older than us, isn’t that something? Not that either of us had the chance to come here.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky mumbles something that Steve doesn’t quite catch, and Steve plows on.<br/>
<br/>
“Everything is so cheap, too. Comparatively, that is. Christ, if you told me back in ‘37 that I’d ever have a wallet packed with tens and twenties, and a little plastic card that’s as good as cash, I’d have laughed my head off. I would have called you nuts.” Steve chuckles. “Everything was crazy, when I came out of the ice, but I never expected money would be one of those things. The dime’s got President Roosevelt’s head on it. The ones I remember are called Mercury dimes now, and people only see them in collections. They stopped making two dollar bills. The penny had the Lincoln Memorial instead of wheat—I liked that better, to be honest—and now they’re making it with shields. I remember when Jefferson nickels were new, and now they’re all anyone knows.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky looks at the table. “I can convert almost any currency to another in my head.” He says it quietly, like it’s something to be ashamed of. “I can remember the old coins—I remember never having enough of them. But I never had the trouble you did. I always seemed to know exactly how much they were worth.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve bites the inside of his lip, and doesn’t say anything.<br/>
<br/>
The pizza arrives, placed squarely between them, and Steve takes a slice. Bucky follows his lead, and Steve focuses on his reaction as he takes a small bite. Bucky chews slowly, swallows, and puts the slice down.<br/>
<br/>
“I burnt my tongue,” Bucky says. “Ow.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve laughs loudly enough to attract the attention of other customers, and he eats his pizza with a smile on his face.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>114 East 1st Street, New York, New York 10009</strong><br/>
<br/>
“Grease?”<br/>
<br/>
“No.”<br/>
<br/>
“Singin’ in the Rain?”<br/>
<br/>
“No.”<br/>
<br/>
“What about An American In Paris?”<br/>
<br/>
“No.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve looks absolutely aghast. “Have you seen <em>anything?”</em><br/>
<br/>
They’re walking down to the East Village from the tower. Bucky’s grown more used to being outside the tower during the day, and is beginning to even look forward to the excursions with Steve. He tells himself it’s because he misses the outdoors.<br/>
<br/>
(It’s a lie. Of course it’s a lie. But it’s one he keeps telling himself.)<br/>
<br/>
“Clint sat down with me and went through a list of the most influential movies of the twentieth century. He told me which ones were actually important,” Bucky says. It’s funny to watch Steve’s face contort the more he speaks. “We watched the first three Star Wars pictures—whose idea was it to make them out of order, anyway?—the Godfather, Indiana Jones, and a bunch of Hitchcock.”<br/>
<br/>
“Clint’s a fan of thrillers?” Steve asks.<br/>
<br/>
“He thinks they’re funny,” Bucky responds. “We have the subtitles on either way, so he takes out his hearing aids. I guess they lose something without the music.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky didn’t think they were particularly thrilling, even with the music, but he thinks that’s part of the reason Clint chose them. Bucky’s had enough of being scared for a lifetime.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, as soon as we get back to the tower, we’re watching some musicals,” Steve says, tone dead-serious. “I can’t believe Clint.”<br/>
<br/>
“Musicals lose something without the music too, you know,” Bucky says. “You shouldn’t be surprised Clint doesn’t like them.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky isn’t sure how to feel about Steve’s special interest in catching him up to date with American pop culture. Steve had no one when he came out of the ice—Stark has mentioned as much multiple times to Bucky, as if Bucky doesn’t think about it constantly. Steve had been given a file of most important events since 1944, and was left to figure out the rest on his own. Bucky doesn’t deserve Steve’s help.<br/>
<br/>
Steve frowns, like he can tell that Bucky’s thinking self-deprecating thoughts. “Buck?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky forces a grin. He can tell it’s not fooling anyone, least of all Steve—it’s too wide, with too many teeth showing, and feels more like a grimace than anything else. “I’m fine.”<br/>
<br/>
The Winter Soldier hadn’t needed to lie. He was sent out to kill, not to pretend to be something he wasn’t. He wasn’t a spy, he was a war machine. Bucky can’t remember if James Buchanan Barnes could lie.<br/>
<br/>
When he thinks about it, James must’ve been at least a halfway decent liar, or Steve wouldn’t have been his friend. Steve of the twenty-first century is open-minded and accepting enough, but Bucky can’t confidently say that about the Steven Rogers he knew during the Depression and the war. He wishes he remembered more.<br/>
<br/>
Steve has a look on his face that says <em>Obviously you’re not fine, and we’ll talk about it later, but I won’t make you talk about it right now.</em><br/>
<br/>
“Are you gonna drag me to hell and back everytime we go out?” Bucky asks, trying to lighten the mood a bit.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s not to hell and back,” Steve says. “It’s only forty-one blocks down. That’s nothing.” He pauses, as if he expects Bucky to say something, to poke fun. Bucky scrambles to remember, but it’s too late by then, too late to say anything like, “I remember when <em>only</em> forty-one blocks would’ve killed you.” Bucky’s too late.<br/>
<br/>
“I guess it is a little far,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
There’s an apology on Bucky’s lips, but he swallows it, because he knows his apologies hurt Steve more than him not remembering. “I don’t mind. Not really.”<br/>
<br/>
“I think it’ll be worth it,” Steve says. He doesn’t elaborate.<br/>
<br/>
The place Steve brings them to isn’t like Lombardi’s. It’s smaller, and blends in more with the buildings around it. Bucky almost walks right past it, but Steve catches him by the arm and pulls him toward the staircase leading down, slightly below street level. There’s an older man behind the counter, and Bucky has to force down a bubbling laugh when he thinks about how, no, there’s actually a <em>younger</em> man behind the counter.<br/>
<br/>
“Two samosas with chickpeas and two chais, please,” Steve says to the older (younger) man. The man nods.<br/>
<br/>
“Samosas?” Bucky asks. He feels foolish, suddenly—he was expecting another food he’d had before that Steve decided wasn’t up to par with modern New York standards, not something completely new.<br/>
<br/>
“They’re delicious. You’re gonna love them,” Steve says as he hands over a handful of bills. “They’re like—they’ve got all sorts of fillings, but I like chickpeas the best—kind of like fried dough, but savoury? You’ll see.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky waits quietly, patiently, and the man behind the counter quickly hands Steve a wrapped package, then places two steaming to-go cups on the counter. Steve flashes a grin at Bucky and indicates for Bucky to take one of the cups.<br/>
<br/>
“Try it,” he encourages, then quickly says, “Wait! It’s hot. Don’t want you to burn your tongue again.”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m not a child,” Bucky says, but he is careful in taking a sip. It is hot, but not hot enough to blister his tongue, and the taste of it takes him by surprise. There’s spice there, but not the kind that he’s more used to now. It’s sweeter than he would have thought.<br/>
<br/>
“Chai has become my favorite kind of tea,” Steve says once they’re back on the street and walking back to Stark Tower.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s tea?” Bucky asks. “Isn’t tea thinner?”<br/>
<br/>
“Some are,” Steve says. “It depends how you make them. More water and less spices can make it a little less rich, but I like the weight.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky takes another long sip, and it goes down smoothly. “It’s good.”<br/>
<br/>
Those two simple words put a bright smile on Steve’s face. “I’m glad.”<br/>
<br/>
“Are you going to let me try the samosas?”<br/>
<br/>
“We can have them when we get back to the tower,” Steve says. “I’m going to queue up Singin’ in the Rain, and we can eat them while we watch. You <em>have</em> to see it, it’s a cultural milestone.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky doesn’t protest, even though he logically knows that any food they bought will be considerably cooled by the time they get back to the tower, and that it’ll take all of ten minutes of the movie to eat. He focuses on the movie. “Is it that good?”<br/>
<br/>
“It’s <em>fantastic,”</em> Steve emphasizes. “One of my favorites. It’s got singing, and dancing, and romance, and just everything.”<br/>
<br/>
“Sap,” Bucky says before he can stop himself.<br/>
<br/>
“I always liked music,” Steve responds. It’s not said to trigger Bucky’s memory, he can tell, but it does something anyway. “Couldn’t dance to save my life, but I liked the sound.”<br/>
<br/>
“We saw Wizard of Oz in the theaters together,” Bucky says, and he can hear Steve inhale sharply. “The tickets cost a quarter, and we still weren’t sure if it was too much to spend, but we saw it anyway. The news about war in Europe hit headlines, and you took me to the pictures to try to cheer me up. You wouldn’t stop singing the rainbow song.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve won’t meet his eyes. “That’s right.”<br/>
<br/>
“You always liked a musical,” Bucky says.<br/>
<br/>
They watch Singin’ in the Rain and eat the samosas. They’re good—savoury, filling, nothing like Bucky’s had before—but they’re gone by the time Don Lockwood lands himself in the leading lady’s car (<em>“That’s Debbie Reynolds, Buck, she was Princess Leia’s mom!”</em>). Steve hums along to all the songs, which distracts Bucky from the way their legs are pressed together. Debbie Reynolds sings a song that makes Bucky ache.<br/>
<br/>
<em>“He’ll kiss her with a sigh—would you? Would you?”</em> She sings, and the blonde woman with the funny voice sings on top of it. <em>“And if the girl were I—would you? Would you?”</em> The blonde woman’s voice fades away, leaving only Debbie Reynolds’ sad alto and Bucky’s pounding heart. <em>“And would you dare to say, ‘let’s do the same as they?’ I would, would you?”</em></p><p><strong><br/>
162 Montague Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201</strong><br/>
<br/>
Sam has been watching Steve. Sam is always kind of watching Steve—he likes watching people, figuring out what makes them tick, and how to subtly help them if he notices a problem, and Steve’s especially fun to watch. He does things, and he has no idea how much joy they bring Sam. He’ll tie a bedsheet around his neck and not say a word, and he’ll continue to wear the bedsheet until someone (Tony) inevitably <em>has</em> to say something. He feigns ignorance over concepts that everyone knows he understands—Sam can’t count how many times he’s heard Steve say “The pictures <em>move?</em> In <em>color?”</em>, as shocked as if he had just seen an alien. Sam once saw Steve walk into a room, take his shoes off, and leave the room with his shoes in hand.<br/>
<br/>
Sam still thinks about that sometimes.<br/>
<br/>
What it boils down to is that Steve is a smart guy with a penchant for fucking with people, and though it’s circumstantially hilarious, it’s also dangerous. It gives Steve an edge that people don’t expect. He is—was—is America’s golden boy. He’s the representative of an age long gone, of an idealized past, so it’s only natural Steve gets swept up in the idealization himself. Maybe it’s other people’s fault for buying into the charade, but Steve doesn’t discourage it. Can someone blame an audience for believing an actor?<br/>
<br/>
These are the questions Sam puzzles over when he’s busy being lapped by Steve. He runs less in New York than he did in D.C., but they’re close enough to Central Park that they can still find the time to run together. Rather, they walk to and from the park together, and then Sam sees Steve in periodic intervals. It’s less humiliating than running around the National Mall, though, because it’s so much larger, and it gives Steve the chance to disappear down a different winding path than Sam and gives the illusion that they’re running the same amount. Sam still finds it hard to forget the difference.<br/>
<br/>
“I hate you, you know,” he says on their walk back down Fifth Avenue. “You’re not even Captain America anymore. You can take a break.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve chuckles. “I like running.”<br/>
<br/>
“Could you try to like it a little less?”<br/>
<br/>
“I still remember when I <em>couldn’t</em> run,” Steve says. “People I knew from around the block would talk about that euphoria—the runner’s high—and I thought they were crazy. How can you enjoy something that’s actively causing your lungs to collapse?”<br/>
<br/>
Sam makes an affirmative noise. He knows Steve was an asthmatic (among other things) back in the day, but it’s never at the forefront of his mind. “I can’t believe they let you into basic.”<br/>
<br/>
“Well, it never would’ve happened if Erskine hadn’t vouched for me,” Steve says. “He was a good man.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam has heard this story before. He knows about Dr. Erskine’s sacrifice, about Steve’s first experience with Hydra, about the way Steve could suddenly run and jump further and faster than he ever could before, further and faster than any human reasonably could. Sam’s heard it all before, but he lets Steve tell it again, and he listens.<br/>
<br/>
Steve doesn’t have much of an accent, but whenever he talks about the past, Sam can hear the Brooklyn in him. That’s another dangerous thing about him—he’s the all-American kid from New York City, where his bite’s meaner than his bark, and no one seems to remember it. People think about Tony, king of Manhattan and L.A., but Tony’s always been more booksmart than streetsmart. He may have been born to the city, but he lived above it, not in it. Sam and Steve are different.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky’s different, too.<br/>
<br/>
If Sam finds it difficult to remember that Steve is Brooklyn-born, it’s nearly impossible to remember Bucky is as well. Sam’s spoken to him one-on-one a handful of times, and they’ve had polite, if not stinted, conversation. He’s made it a point to also watch Bucky when he can, but he understands that Bucky’s had lifetimes of being watched, so it’s not the same kind of watching he gives Steve. Watching Bucky is about noticing the ways he changes himself around other people, and about noticing if anything is wrong.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky’s a good actor. Not as good as Steve, but good enough to fool Steve. Or maybe Steve’s a good enough actor to fool Bucky.<br/>
<br/>
“How have your lunch dates been going, by the way?” Sam asks, because he’s genuinely curious. Steve seems to trip on nothing.<br/>
<br/>
“My what?” He asks, regaining his composure slightly.<br/>
<br/>
“Your outings with Bucky?” Sam clarifies, because Steve still looks like he accidentally swallowed an egg.<br/>
<br/>
“Those are—they aren’t—Jesus, Sam—don’t just spring that on a guy!” Steve splutters. Sam raises his eyebrows.<br/>
<br/>
“That’s what they are, aren’t they?”<br/>
<br/>
“No!”<br/>
<br/>
“No?”<br/>
<br/>
<em>“No,”</em> Steve emphasizes. “Me and Bucky haven’t discussed anything like that. I’d never take advantage of him that way.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve’s mind has gone down a spiral Sam did not expect. He makes a mental note as he tries to soothe him. “That’s not what I meant at all. I think it’s very—” <em>Sweet,</em> his mind helpfully supplies, but he chooses a less romantic word. “—kind of you. You’re a one in a million friend.”<br/>
<br/>
“Do people think they’re dates?” Steve demands. He isn’t angry; his voice is filled with anxiety. “Does Bucky? Is he upset?”<br/>
<br/>
“Hey, slow down,” Sam says. They’re back at the tower by this point, and Sam’s glad that they’re out of the street for Steve’s crisis. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Are you okay?”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m—” Steve begins, then breaks off. He rubs his face. “I don’t know. Probably not. Jesus. This shouldn’t scare me.”<br/>
<br/>
“What scares you?” Sam asks carefully. He’s never discussed the topic of gay rights with Steve before—he knows Steve is a good person, but even a good person can say hurtful things, and Sam wasn’t ready to handle that before. He’s not sure if he’s ready to handle it now, but it seems that they’re going to talk about it anyway.<br/>
<br/>
They step into the elevator, and Steve hits one of the top floors. “I’m gay.”<br/>
<br/>
That isn’t what Sam is expecting. “You’re—?”<br/>
<br/>
“I know it’s surprising. I don’t talk about it.” Steve forces a laugh. “I always figured I would just never talk about it. I’d marry a gal that I got on well with and that’d be that.” He rubs his shoulder. “That was part of the briefing I got when I got out of the ice, that same-sex marriage was legal in some places. I was told to keep my mouth shut if it upset me.” There’s a trace of a smile on his lips. “I was ecstatic, honestly. One of the best parts of the future is seeing two people in love be able to walk down the street holding hands.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve is suddenly moving much too fast for Sam. “No, no, no, back up. You’re gay?”<br/>
<br/>
“Gay. Bisexual. Something along those lines,” Steve says. There’s tension in his shoulders. “We don’t have to linger on it.”<br/>
<br/>
“Steve, we absolutely have to linger on it, because<em> I’m gay, too,”</em> Sam states. Steve freezes.<br/>
<br/>
“You are?” He asks. “On God?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes, Steve, Christ!” Sam laughs. “I can’t believe this. We’ve known each other for how long now, and we haven’t talked about this once?”<br/>
<br/>
“There were other things happening,” Steve says. “We had bigger problems to worry about.”<br/>
<br/>
“I thought you knew and just didn’t want to talk about it with me,” Sam continues. “I told you about Riley. We were…we were something, you know? I thought you knew.”<br/>
<br/>
“How could I?” Steve responds. It isn’t accusatory. “Different times.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam supposes that’s true. He may have served under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but Steve lived like that for his entire life up until going into the ice. “I suppose.”<br/>
<br/>
“Bucky doesn’t know,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“I figured,” Sam says. He doesn’t mention how he watches how Steve watches Bucky, and how Bucky watches him right back. Steve’s a smart guy. He’ll figure it out on his own eventually. “Hey, I’m starving. Has Bucky had Chinese yet? I know a great place in Brooklyn.”<br/>
<br/>
It’s a gamble, but Steve lights up like the Fourth of July. “No, he hasn’t. We haven’t been to Brooklyn together, either.”<br/>
<br/>
“It’s barely in Brooklyn, just the first stop in on the 4 or 5,” Sam says.<br/>
<br/>
“If it’s across the river, it’s Brooklyn enough for me,” Steve says. “I’ll let Buck know, and we’ll meet you back in the lobby, okay?”<br/>
<br/>
Sam agrees, and it takes getting to the subway platform for him to realize that Steve and Bucky are a special kind of huge and a special kind of stupid. They stick out like giant sore thumbs in comparison to others at Grand Central Station, and Sam watches as people’s eyes flit to Steve and try to place where they know him from. Bucky isn’t doing much better—he’s actively trying to make himself less noticeable, which is only making him more noticeable. Sam, not for the first time, wishes his friends were smarter.<br/>
<br/>
Sam’s a hypocrite, though, as Steve stands in front of Bucky and Sam positions himself behind him, packing him in like a sardine. It is not a good plan to keep Bucky calm. It mostly works anyway.<br/>
<br/>
Sam can’t tell if Bucky is clinging to Steve or if Steve is clinging to Bucky as they step out of the train. It’s none of his business. He just wants to get Chinese.<br/>
<br/>
“Come on, this way,” he says, leading them up out of the tunnel and up to Borough Hall, then to Montague Street. “I know Chinatown’s closer, but I’m telling you, this place is the best.”<br/>
<br/>
They take the stairs down below street level, and the woman seating them gives them a once-over before leading them to a booth. Sam silently thanks her. Unfortunately, he thought Steve and Bucky would have gotten a little smarter after stepping off the train, and that is not the case. The two of them squeeze into one side of the booth together, leaving normal, human-sized Sam plenty of room on his side to judge them.<br/>
<br/>
“What do you recommend?” Steve asks.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s Chinese, it’s all good,” Sam says, trying to figure out how the two will squeeze their way out of the booth eventually. “Are you guys comfortable? Does one of you want to sit on this side?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky shakes his head. Sam supposes that’s the end of that. “I can all order three different things and we can all share, if that’s okay with you guys.”<br/>
<br/>
“That’s fine with me,” Bucky says. “Just nothing with shrimp, because Steve’s allergic.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam looks at Steve. “You’re allergic to shrimp?”<br/>
<br/>
“I used to be. Before the serum,” he says with a shrug, and Bucky half-smiles as if suppressing a laugh. Sam blinks. He’s spent a long time studying Steve and Bucky, and he’s used to the guilty looks that accompany their revelations about each other in the present. He’s not used to Steve or Bucky handling themselves with such grace.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky does start fully laughing, and he says, “You’re really not allergic to shrimp anymore?”<br/>
<br/>
“Buck, I learned that before I went into the ice,” Steve says. “I was a hundred times as strong as I was before the serum, I could run as fast as an auto, and you think I <em>wasn’t</em> going to check if I was still allergic to half the food God put on Earth?”<br/>
<br/>
“What are we supposed to tell people now?” Bucky asks, still smiling.<br/>
<br/>
“What is happening?” Sam interrupts. Steve is grinning.<br/>
<br/>
“Back before the war started—or I guess before we got involved—me and Buck would go out together and get dinner and drinks and try to pick up broads, you know?”<br/>
<br/>
“Never really succeeded,” Bucky jumps in, and Steve rolls his eyes.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, yeah, I looked like a twelve year old with the body of a World War I vet, and you wouldn’t schmooze up a girl unless she had a friend for me, but that’s besides the point,” Steve says. Sam is trying to process that information when Steve continues, <em>“Anyway,</em> on special occasions, they had this chicken and shrimp and potato dish. It was huge, and it was served until they ran out, and it was way too big for one person, so me and Bucky would split a plate.”<br/>
<br/>
“Chicken and shrimp and potatoes?”<br/>
<br/>
“It came with this sauce,” Bucky picks up. “That sauce? Heaven. But it only came with this one dish!”<br/>
<br/>
“And Bucky didn’t eat shrimp, because he kept Kosher—”<br/>
<br/>
“—but it’s not like I was bursting at the seams to tell people that outside of Crown Heights—”<br/>
<br/>
“—so I came up with the brilliant farce to say I’m allergic,” Steve says. “Because I was the guy people looked at and thought, ‘Oh, of course he’s allergic to shrimp!’”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky has tears in his eyes at this point. “But it’s not like Steve had ever gotten the opportunity to ever try shrimp before—”<br/>
<br/>
“—oh yeah, poor kid from Brooklyn who’s sick all the time with a single mom, loads of money to be spending on <em>shrimp—”</em><br/>
<br/>
“—so one time they <em>do</em> screw up and they put shrimp in along with the chicken and potatoes, this punk over here takes a big bite, swells up like a balloon—”<br/>
<br/>
“—he’s laughing now, but he was ready to kill the people in the back, I’d never seen him that scared before—”<br/>
<br/>
“—and so we learned Steve was actually allergic to shrimp, because <em>of course he was!”</em> Bucky finishes. He’s struggling to breathe with how hard he’s laughing, and Sam can’t keep the smile off his own face. “He just couldn’t catch a break!”<br/>
<br/>
Sam is chuckling, but even amidst his enjoyment of the situation, he’s studying the two of them. Steve is leaning up against Bucky, and they’re still laughing loud and bright. It’s comfortable, and familiar, and intimate.<br/>
<br/>
Sam orders sesame chicken, lo mein, and the beef and broccoli. There’s no shrimp.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>Stark Tower, 69th Floor, 33 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 10017</strong><br/>
<br/>
<em>The only thing better than having a tower with enough rooms to house all your coworkers-turned-friends and then some,</em> Tony thinks to himself, <em>is having a tower with enough floors to declare that the designated meeting-floor is the 69th.</em><br/>
<br/>
It’s difficult to wrangle all the Avengers together, even with the majority of them living in the same building, which is why Tony is happy to see Steve, Sam, Bruce, Natasha, and Clint all in the common area together. Thor comes and goes with the weather—<em>ha ha, nice one, Tony</em>—so Tony sees the five of them in the room, and decides they will eat dinner together.<br/>
<br/>
“Look at us, like a real family!” He announces gleefully. “Avengers assemble, am I right, guys?”<br/>
<br/>
Nat doesn’t look at him. “Tony. What a joy. I keep forgetting you live here.”<br/>
<br/>
“Love you too, Nat. I’m taking orders. Shawarma. It’s happening.” Tony clasps his hands together. “Who wants what?”<br/>
<br/>
“I just ate—” Bruce begins, and Tony holds up a hand to stop him.<br/>
<br/>
“Stuffed grape leaves,” he says definitively, and Bruce sighs. Tony points at Nat. “Chickpea salad.” Then Clint. “Fatoush.”<br/>
<br/>
“Are you guessing everyone’s order, or do you just know?” Sam asks.<br/>
<br/>
“I just know,” Tony says as Nat and Bruce say “Guessing.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam shakes his head. “I’ll also take a chickpea salad.”<br/>
<br/>
“I was going to say beet, but if you want to be wrong—”<br/>
<br/>
“That’s no way to speak to Captain America,” Nat interrupts with a snort. “Let him order what he wants.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony holds his hands up, palms forward. “Fine, fine. Sam, chickpea salad. Steve, you’re getting a kafta kebab.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve gives a thumbs up.<br/>
<br/>
“Does Red October want anything?” Tony asks, because he’s a considerate friend, and even though he won’t always look Bucky in the eyes, he <em>will</em> offer to buy him food. Steve opens his mouth to answer, and Tony plows on ahead. “You know what, of course he does. Chicken shawarma. I’m going to place the order.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony isn’t afraid of Bucky, per se. Every single person in the tower is physically stronger than Tony, in some way or another, and if he was afraid of the raw strength of others compared to himself, he would constantly be pissing himself. He’s a little unnerved by the guy, in the same way he’s a little unnerved by Natasha.<br/>
<br/>
Then again, he knows Natasha didn’t assassinate President Kennedy.<br/>
<br/>
It’s not funny. It’s not funny that Steve’s best-friend-turned-sleeper-agent-turned-best- friend-again-slash-secret-crush killed JFK. It. Is. Not. Funny.<br/>
<br/>
It’s a <em>little</em> funny. Tony tries to not think about it when he’s around Bucky, because he’ll start laughing, and he can’t handle that situation.<br/>
<br/>
Tony comes back into the common room, and Steve says, “I don’t know if Bucky’s going to want to eat with the rest of us.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony shrugs. “Then he’ll eat in his room. I thought I’d help you with your food quest. Don’t tell me he’s had shawarma already?”<br/>
<br/>
“No,” Steve admits. “We’ve been working our way around. I’ve been trying to not overwhelm him.”<br/>
<br/>
“Steven Grant Rogers, you are disgustingly noble,” Tony declares.<br/>
<br/>
“Hey, now, don’t go using my name flagrantly like that,” Steve says. “It’s disrespectful, is what it is.”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m supposed to respect you?” Tony asks. It comes out meaner than he meant, but Nat laughs and Clint grins, so he’s not too broken up about it.<br/>
<br/>
“Not me—though some respect <em>would</em> be nice,” Steve says. “Grant.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony cocks his head to the side. “What in the goddamn hell are you talking about?”<br/>
<br/>
“The Grant in my name is for Ulysses S. Grant,” Steve says, totally deadpan.<br/>
<br/>
Tony blinks. “That can’t possibly be true,” he says. “Weren’t your parents Irish immigrants?”<br/>
<br/>
“They knew Grant was, Tony,” Steve says. “Please don’t insult their intelligence.”<br/>
<br/>
“He died in—” Tony’s fingers fly on his phone. “—1885, and you weren’t born until 1918. That’d be like having a kid today and naming them Reagan.”<br/>
<br/>
“Reagan died in 2004,” Bruce says. “Not really the same at all.”<br/>
<br/>
“Do you think people aren’t named Reagan?” Natasha asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Not after the president!” Tony says exasperatedly.<br/>
<br/>
“I wish I lived in your fantasy world, Tony,” Natasha snorts.</p><p>“Grant also didn’t have the grim legacy Reagan does,” Clint says. “It’d be more like naming your kid Kennedy.”<br/>
<br/>
<em>Do not laugh. Do not laugh.</em><br/>
<br/>
“That’s still not that common!” Tony protests, not laughing. “You seriously expect me to believe that Steve ‘Less Sexy Captain America’—”<br/>
<br/>
“Tony—”<br/>
<br/>
“—I mean, we could call a horse a horse and just say Ugly Cap, but I’m trying to be kind—”<br/>
<br/>
“Tony!”<br/>
<br/>
“—is named after Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant?” Tony finishes. Steve stares him down.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, we have no way of proving or denying it,” Natasha says, and Tony gets an idea.<br/>
<br/>
“Oh, yes we do,” he says gleefully. “Hey, Jarvis, get Red October in here!”<br/>
<br/>
Steve does not look nearly as unsure as he should. In fact, he looks downright victorious. Bucky steps into the kitchen moments later, confused.<br/>
<br/>
“Jarvis told me to come here? Is something wrong?” He asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Buck, what is the significance of my middle name?” Steve asks, and he smirks at Tony. Tony’s heart sinks.<br/>
<br/>
“You were named after that Union general,” Bucky replies. Tony is in hell. “President Grant.”<br/>
<br/>
Natasha <em>howls.</em> Bucky scrunches his face in confusion. “Am I…missing something?”<br/>
<br/>
“This is the worst day of my life,” Tony says, and mercifully, his phone buzzes. “Oh, thank God. Shawarma is here. Who wants to get it with me?”<br/>
<br/>
There is absolute silence, which would be bad enough, but becomes worse because Bucky shrugs and says, “I’ll help.”<br/>
<br/>
<em>Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.</em><br/>
<br/>
“Thanks, buddy!” Tony says, his voice over-enthusiastic. “That’s really thoughtful and helpful of you! I really appreciate it.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky gives him a flat look, and heads back to the elevator. Tony follows him, head hung like he’s heading to the electric chair.<br/>
<br/>
As the door closes, Tony begins to regret holding meetings on the 69th floor. It’s far too far from the ground, with a far too long elevator ride with a far too quiet ex-assassin.<br/>
<br/>
“So, Red October,” Tony begins too loudly. “Ulysses S. Grant, huh?”<br/>
<br/>
(Tony is in his own personal hell.)<br/>
<br/>
Bucky glances from the ground below himself to Tony’s shoes. “Yeah. Grant.” He makes a noise, and it takes Tony a second to realize it’s laughter. “Shit, <em>Grant.”</em><br/>
<br/>
“Something you want to share with the class?” Tony asks. He is desperately trying not to freak out. He didn’t know Bucky <em>could</em> laugh. It seemed like something Hydra would have taken away from him.<br/>
<br/>
“You’re really easy to lie to,” Bucky says, meeting Tony’s eyes with a grin that’s a replica of Steve’s. “Aren’t you a businessman or something? Shouldn’t you be good at spotting bullshit?”<br/>
<br/>
Tony blinks, his mouth hanging open. He’s pretty sure Bucky just insulted him—well, he’s positive Bucky just insulted him, but he’s pretty sure it was in jest. Like they’re friends. Like Bucky is comfortable with him.<br/>
<br/>
“I am <em>not</em> bad at spotting bullshit!” He eventually splutters.<br/>
<br/>
“Steve was born in <em>1918.</em> President Grant died in, what, the 1880s?” Bucky says with the same grin.<br/>
<br/>
“1885,” Tony says hollowly.<br/>
<br/>
“Why the hell would his parents have named him after a president from the 70s?” Bucky laughs.<br/>
<br/>
“That’s what I said!” Tony says, aghast. “But—Reagan!”<br/>
<br/>
“What?” Bucky asks.<br/>
<br/>
“People are still named after—it doesn’t matter! You were my ace in the hole!” Tony exclaims. <em>“You</em> screwed me over!”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky smirks. “You’re just easy to lie to, Stark.”<br/>
<br/>
“Well, you’re just a good liar,” Tony mutters, and his heart immediately sinks. He tries to fix his mistake. “In a normal way! In the way some people are naturally good liars, without having been brainwashed by Nazis! I meant nothing by that comment, other than the fact that you and Steve like fucking with me!”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky rolls his eyes, and Tony has another <em>he-sure-is-a-human-with-human-capabilities</em> moment. “You talk a lot, Stark.”<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah,” Tony says, because it’s true. “You don’t talk enough, Red October.”<br/>
<br/>
“What is that?” Bucky asks. They’re on the 39th floor. This is the longest elevator ride of Tony’s life.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s a nickname,” Tony says, and mentally congratulates himself for looking even dumber in front of a person who probably already holds no respect for him. “It’s a movie. And a book? It’s definitely also a book.”<br/>
<br/>
“What’s it about?” Bucky asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Oh, dude, it’s <em>awesome,”</em> Tony emphasizes. “It’s actually called <em>The Hunt for Red October,</em> and it’s about this old Soviet submarine captain who’s trying to defect to the U.S., but his higher ups get wind of it, and obviously they aren’t pleased, so they try to hunt him and his crew down.”<br/>
<br/>
“Oh,” Bucky says. “So he’s Red October?”<br/>
<br/>
“No, his submarine is the Red October,” Tony says.<br/>
<br/>
“And it’s a weapon,” Bucky says, with no hesitation. Tony freezes.<br/>
<br/>
“Well—I mean—it’s a submarine, and it’s got missiles on it—but it’s not like they’re <em>used,”</em> he says quickly. He feels like he’s sweating bullets. “It’s more of like, uh, the real hero? It takes the defecting Soviets where they need to go and keeps them protected. There’s also a plot with the Americans that find them that’s very Cuba Missile Crisis—it’s hard to explain, you’ve got to see it.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky then says something that Tony would not have expected in a million years. “Okay.”<br/>
<br/>
“Wh—okay? Really?” Tony asks, incredulous.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky shrugs, and Tony yells at himself mentally for <em>still</em> being surprised that Bucky is acting like a human. “Why not?”<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t know, it’s just—I don’t know,” Tony says. “You into movies?”<br/>
<br/>
“Not really,” Bucky says. “Steve’ll be there, right?”<br/>
<br/>
“As long as he wants to be,” Tony says, and mentally compliments himself for retaining his mental capabilities, instead of doing what he really wants, and screaming at the top of his lungs. “Can’t see why he wouldn’t want to be.”<br/>
<br/>
A small smile appears on Bucky’s face, and it makes Tony realize, for a brief moment, what Steve sees in him. “Dinner and a show, huh.”<br/>
<br/>
With that, they reach the first floor, and the elevator doors open. Bucky takes the bag from the delivery man and Tony fishes a twenty out of his wallet. The delivery man is still staring at them when the elevator doors close again.<br/>
<br/>
The ride up is marginally less awkward than the ride down. Tony gives himself a mental pat on the back.<br/>
<br/>
The food is passed out, Tony finds <em>The Hunt for Red October</em> online—he silently apologizes to the VHS tape he knows is somewhere in the tower—and pretends to not hear Bucky say, “Yeah, Stark said the submarine is the hero of the film, which is a load of bull, but whatever lets him sleep at night.”<br/>
<br/>
Tony sits next to Nat, and also pretends not to see Bucky curl up next to Steve. That’s none of his business.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>84 Court Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201</strong><br/>
<br/>
Steve doesn’t take Bucky to an Olive Garden, but it’s a near thing. In the end, his desire for Bucky to have a more genuine Italian experience overwhelms his desire to annoy Tony. He makes reservations for dinner at a place in Brooklyn that looks good, and doesn’t think about it further. Unfortunately, he tells Sam, and Sam apparently thinks about it extensively.<br/>
<br/>
“So it’s a date?” Sam prods. Steve gives him a flat look.<br/>
<br/>
“I’m introducing him to Italian food,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t see you taking him to Little Italy,” Sam points out.<br/>
<br/>
“I like Brooklyn!” Steve protests. “And it’s right in Brooklyn Heights—you know Bucky hasn’t been to the Promenade? I was thinking after dinner, I can show him what Robert Moses did to our city.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam shakes his head. “And then you’re gonna get down on one knee and ask him to make you the happiest man in the world—”<br/>
<br/>
“Sam,” Steve says in warning. “It’s just dinner.”<br/>
<br/>
“Does Bucky know that?” Sam asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Bucky doesn’t even know we’re going,” Steve says without a hint of guilt. Sam stares at him.<br/>
<br/>
“Excuse me?” Sam asks. “You’re going to spring a trip on him?”<br/>
<br/>
“It’s across the river, not an international voyage,” Steve says. “Besides, he’s getting better at handling surprises.”<br/>
<br/>
Sam has a judgemental look on his face that Steve takes to mean, <em>Better doesn’t mean good,</em> but he doesn’t actually say anything, so Steve just smiles.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s going to be fun,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“Every day, you make me consider moving back to D.C.,” Sam says, shaking his head. “I hope it goes well.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve’s smile widens, and he silently thinks,<em> Me too.</em><br/>
<br/>
It’s not a huge risk taking Bucky into Brooklyn, but it’s a risk nonetheless. Steve’s gone out with him a few times, running across the bridge or taking the 4 into Crown Heights, and Bucky has visibly relaxed after they’ve crossed the East River. Brooklyn’s different than Steve remembers, and he can’t say he likes all the changes, but they’re certainly not all bad. He’s not sure about Bucky’s opinion on the matter.<br/>
<br/>
Steve finds it hard to walk around Brooklyn Heights. It’s too different. It’s too similar. He misses it, and he thinks Bucky does too. He’s counting on that, in order for his (and he can admit this) poorly planned scheme outing to go smoothly.<br/>
<br/>
“Hey, Buck, we’re going out,” Steve says. He tries to use his Captain America voice—the one that’s friendly, inviting, but leaves no room for argument.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky glances up at him, book open on his lap. He’s been reading more, and Steve thinks that’s a good thing. It keeps him busy and entertained. It means he’s showing an interest in something.<br/>
<br/>
“I have ten more chapters of <em>Twilight</em> to get through,” Bucky says.<br/>
<br/>
Steve does kind of wish Clint hadn’t gotten Bucky hooked on that particular series. “I made dinner reservations. In Brooklyn.” His words come out awkwardly, like water out of a clogged pipe.<br/>
<br/>
“Well, that changes everything,” Bucky says sarcastically. “I’m learning all about Edward’s family history. He was born in 1901, did you know? Got turned into a vampire in 1918, same year you were born. Just wandered around for ninety years. Dodged the World War Two draft, I guess. Lucky bastard.”<br/>
<br/>
“Come on, Bucky,” Steve says, then clears his throat, and layers on the Captain America. “It’s just dinner. It’ll be fine. You’re going to have fun.”<br/>
<br/>
“Thank you, Captain Rogers,” Bucky says, and flips the page. “I don’t think I would’ve dodged the draft if I could, though. I wanted to kill Nazis. Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t enlist.”<br/>
<br/>
“Me neither,” Steve echoes.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up, but Steve knows it’s not in response to his comment when Bucky points at the page. “Edward has just informed Bella that she says his name in her sleep. He’s been watching her, by the way. This guy’s worse than me.” He looks at Steve. “That’s not something a lot of people do, you know. Most people don’t form coherent words while asleep.”<br/>
<br/>
“Oh,” Steve says quietly. He clears his throat. “Are you, um, enjoying the book?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky glances back at him. His eyes aren’t dead, per se, but they’re flat and unhappy. “It’s fine. It’s something to do.” He shrugs. “It’s not that good, but it’s enjoyable. Good enough for me.”<br/>
<br/>
“The restaurant’s in Brooklyn Heights. It’s nice. It’s called Queen,” Steve says. He knows their conversation is stilted and awkward, but he’s getting Bucky out of the tower today.<br/>
<br/>
“Queens?” Bucky says, overly shocked. “In <em>Brooklyn?”</em><br/>
<br/>
That does surprise a laugh out of Steve. “Yeah. Just the one, though.”<br/>
<br/>
“Just the one,” Bucky repeats, and turns the page. “Shit, I haven’t been to Queens in forever.”<br/>
<br/>
“Don’t go into Brooklyn that much anymore, either,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky snorts. “Brooklyn doesn’t want me.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve’s mouth draws into a line. “Buck, believe me when I say this, Brooklyn’s one of the only places that has ever really wanted you. It’s one of the only places that’s really wanted either of us.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky takes a deep breath, dog-ears his page, and shuts the book. He stands up from the couch and walks toward the elevator, and when Steve doesn’t immediately follow, he turns around and puts his hands on his hips.<br/>
<br/>
“I thought we had dinner reservations?” Bucky asks, and Steve smiles.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s a little early,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“Show me around our city, then,” Bucky says. “The city that apparently wants us so goddamn much.”<br/>
<br/>
It’s still layered in sarcasm, but it’s a victory, and Steve’s learned to take those where he can get them. “You want to walk or take the train?”<br/>
<br/>
“You want us to walk from 42nd Street to Brooklyn?” Bucky asks, incredulous. “Steve, if I wanted to walk around Manhattan, I’d just have Clint go with me.”<br/>
<br/>
“Not that far,” Steve comments, and Bucky rolls his eyes.<br/>
<br/>
“Just because you’re still living like we’re running around occupied France doesn’t mean I am,” Bucky says. “The train’s fine. I like the train.”<br/>
<br/>
Within twenty-five minutes, they’re standing on the other side of the river, Steve with a huge grin, and Bucky with his arms crossed over his chest and Tony’s MIT hat pulled over his face.<br/>
<br/>
“You really like this subway stop,” Bucky comments, and Steve shrugs.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s close to home,” he says, and allows himself to sound wistful.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky tilts the brim of the hat up. “Yeah. It is close to home.” He gazes out into the distance, and Steve can’t tell what he’s thinking. “I miss calling Brooklyn home.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve nods. “Me too.”<br/>
<br/>
They walk down Montague Street—Bucky points at the Chinese restaurant they ate at a few weeks ago, and says, “We should go back there sometime, I want to try their fried rice.”<br/>
Steve’s heart skips a beat, and he squeezes Bucky’s shoulder.<br/>
<br/>
“Whatever you want,” he says. His voice reveals an emotion he wasn’t aware he was feeling.<br/>
<br/>
“Where’re you taking me, Rogers?” Bucky asks.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s a surprise,” Steve says, and he means it. “You remember that crazy architect when were kids?”<br/>
<br/>
“Moses?” Bucky asks. “Tried to build a bridge, couldn’t get the funding, and threw a fit when the city made him build a tunnel instead?”<br/>
<br/>
“That’s the one,” Steve says.<br/>
<br/>
“That happened right before we were sent to Europe—the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel, right? They started and immediately hit the brakes for the war effort,” Bucky says. “Don’t tell me Moses got his bridge, after all.”<br/>
<br/>
“He got a lot of them,” Steve says, grinning. They reach the end of the street, and Steve leads Bucky through the short section of old apartments until they reach the Promenade. Bucky’s mouth hangs open.<br/>
<br/>
“This wasn’t here when we were kids,” he finally says.<br/>
<br/>
“Sure wasn’t,” Steve says. They walk to the handrail, and Steve points down. “There’s the BQE—one of Moses’ projects. You can see the Statue of Liberty over there to the left, and if we walk this way, we can see the Brooklyn Bridge.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky swallows. “Wow.”<br/>
<br/>
“But Moses, right? Got the go ahead by Roosevelt and Truman—that was the president after FDR, Buck—and just went nuts making bridges,” Steve continues, as if Bucky isn’t frozen in place, staring out over the harbor. “He ended up getting the Triborough bridge he wanted, the Verrazano, the Henry Hudson—all sorts of bridges.”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t say anything.<br/>
<br/>
“Wasn’t all good things, though,” Steve says. He seems to be unable to shut his mouth. “He tried to get rid of the Lower East Side, you know? Wanted to put an expressway through Lower Manhattan. People didn’t like that at all, especially after he destroyed the original Penn Station. Remember Pennsylvania Station? Absolutely gorgeous building. We went there once or twice—felt like the Pantheon, in the middle of New York. And Moses destroyed it.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve feels an emotion that isn’t quite sadness, and isn’t quite fury, but is a terrible combination. His and Bucky’s Penn Station was destroyed, and they’ll never be back to it. Bucky remains silent.<br/>
<br/>
“But when it came to the Lower East Side—well, you’ll never believe this, but this lady who wasn’t even born here helped save it,” Steve rambles. “I don’t remember where she was from originally, but when Moses decided the Lower East Side had to go, she was in Greenwich Village. People already weren’t happy about Moses clearing the slums, and this lady got the whole neighborhood together against him. Real brave broad. Jane Jacobs.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky is still transfixed by the harbor, but he quietly says, “Everything’s changed, hasn’t it? Even us. Especially us.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve doesn’t have an answer for that.<br/>
<br/>
“The river’s still here, though,” Bucky says. “Different water, same river.” He looks back at Steve. “I always liked the East River better than the Hudson.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve wants to kiss Bucky. Instead, he takes his hand gently, and says, “Let’s keep walking. Wouldn’t want to be late to our reservations.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky doesn’t let go of his hand. It’s warm, and grounding, and Steve doesn’t think he could let go if he wanted. Bucky continues to look towards Manhattan, as the harbor becomes the river. There are others on the Promenade, but they don’t pay any mind to Bucky and Steve. Some of them seem just as transfixed by the view as Bucky.<br/>
<br/>
Finally, Bucky breaks out of his stupor, and looks back at Steve. It takes Steve a moment, but he realizes Bucky isn’t just looking at him—he’s looking beyond him, at the limited greenery, and the brown apartments, and the streetlamps that have come on. He’s looking at <em>Brooklyn.</em><br/>
<br/>
“I guess the city really does want me, after all,” Bucky says, quirking his lips into a smile. Steve’s heart skips a beat.<br/>
<br/>
Queen is a good restaurant—not too loud, not too quiet. Bucky gets pasta alla norma with linguini, and Steve, a chicken parmesan dish. They swap plates, so Bucky can try more at once, and his verdict is, “It’s good. I like the Chinese place better, though.”<br/>
<br/>
They don’t talk about their hands.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>251 East 45th Street, Ste 1, New York, New York 10017</strong><br/>
<br/>
Clint is, frankly, nearly nauseous with the amount Bucky and Steve are pining after each other. He can put up with a lot, but when he trips over a stack of Streit’s and Ritz boxes in Bucky’s room, he knows he’s had enough.<br/>
<br/>
He chucks one of the offending boxes at Bucky’s head, and it harmlessly bounces off. That’s a better sign than most—the Soldier would’ve caught the box, but Bucky just turns around, frowning, and signs, <em>What was that for?<br/>
<br/>
You’re a mess,</em> Clint signs back, scowling, and gestures to the scattered boxes. <em>Thought you were over crackers. Thought Steve had convinced you to eat real-boy food.</em><br/>
<br/>
Bucky flips him off. <em>Don’t want to talk about Steve.</em><br/>
<br/>
<em>You’re worrying him,</em> Clint signs, because it’s true. Bucky and Steve had returned from their dinner date a few nights ago, and Bucky had holed himself up in his room like it was a fort. Clint’s been forced to watch Steve drag his feet from place to place like a sad, lead-footed puppy, glancing up only when people enter the room, and his face immediately falling when he realizes they aren’t Bucky. Clint could laugh if the whole thing wasn’t so sad.<br/>
<br/>
<em>I don’t have a guilt complex like Stark,</em> Bucky signs with a frown.<em> Or like Steve, for that matter. How do you think I live with myself?<br/>
<br/>
Send my regards to your therapist,</em> Clint signs back, eyebrows raised. <em>And I’m not trying to guilt you anything. Steve is worrying because he’s Steve.<br/>
<br/>
Fucking Catholics, </em>is what Clint garners from Bucky’s hand movements. There’s a small smile on Bucky’s face, though, the kind he always has when Steve does something noble. Clint doesn’t know if Bucky even realizes he does it.<br/>
<br/>
<em>‘Fucking Catholics’ as it may be, you should go talk to him,</em> Clint signs insistently. <em>How about you take him out for food, for once?</em><br/>
<br/>
Bucky gives Clint a flat look. <em>Of course, because I know so many restaurants.<br/>
<br/>
Point taken,</em> Clint signs, and sighs. An idea comes to him, and he brightens. <em>Hey, what if I came with you guys? There’s this great Thai place near here that I love—have you guys had Thai yet?</em><br/>
<br/>
Bucky shakes his head.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Oh, you’re gonna love Thai,</em> Clint signs definitively.<em> It’s settled. A little triple date with you, me, and Steve. And don’t let me forget my hearing aids, you know Steve’s ASL sucks.</em><br/>
<br/>
Steve’s ASL does suck—he can usually understand Clint fine enough, but when trying to communicate <em>back</em> to Clint, he’s stuck with the same forty rudimentary signs. Clint knows he’s taking a class with little kids and their parents, but the good Lord apparently did <em>not</em> gift Steve with the ability to quickly pick up language.<br/>
<br/>
Clint finds Steve easily enough, sitting on the couch on the 69th floor with the normal sad look in his eyes. He snaps to get his attention.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Hi, Clint,</em> Steve awkwardly signs.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Bucky and me are getting food. You’re coming,</em> Clint signs back. Steve squints, the gears in his head clearly turning, then frowns.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Don’t want to,</em> he signs back.<br/>
<br/>
<em>You are a baby,</em> Clint signs. Steve’s frown deepens, having clearly caught the last word.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Not a baby,</em> Steve signs.<br/>
<br/>
<em>Baby, baby, baby,</em> Clint mocks. Steve scowls.<br/>
<br/>
<em>You—</em> he signs, then stops, clearly looking for the right signs. <em>You are not nice.</em><br/>
<br/>
Clint snorts, and takes pity on Steve. “The aids are in, Rogers, and I didn’t put them in just to get lunch with Bucky. You’re coming.”<br/>
<br/>
“C’mon, Clint—” Steve says aloud, and tries to sign along, but only gets Clint’s name-sign right.<br/>
<br/>
“Rogers, I swear to God, if you don’t get your all-American ass down to the lobby in the next five minutes, I’m going to start filling your room with Bucky’s cracker boxes,” Clint snaps. “Now get moving.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve acquiesces. “He’s really started eating crackers again?”<br/>
<br/>
Clint doesn’t mean to be so judgmental of Steve, because the cracker boxes were his signal that things were getting bad with Bucky again, but he rolls his eyes. “It’s <em>crackers.</em> It’s not like he had a cocaine relapse.” He snorts. “Crackers, not crack.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve doesn’t laugh, which is truly tragic, because Clint thought his joke was at least a little amusing. “What is going <em>on</em> with you guys?”<br/>
<br/>
Steve sighs, deeply and heavily. It’s as if he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. “The other night, Bucky and I held hands.”<br/>
<br/>
“I’ll kill you,” Clint says automatically, then quickly backtracks before Steve’s face can adopt a properly horrified expression. “Not in a homophobic way, oh my God, in a “I can’t believe my friends are this stupid” way! Jesus, sorry. I should’ve—I don’t know, thought that through.” He scratches his head, longing to do something with his hands. <em>“Seriously?”</em><br/>
<br/>
Steve nods miserably. “Bucky probably hates me.”<br/>
<br/>
“Again, I must clarify this is not in a homophobic way, but I’ll kill you,” Clint says. “Why the hell would he hate you?”<br/>
<br/>
Steve opens his mouth, then closes it. “I don’t know. Just because.”<br/>
<br/>
“Okay, reasons Bucky would hate you,” Clint says, and holds up a single finger. “‘Because.’ Now, reasons why Bucky <em>doesn’t</em> hate you: you were best friends, you went through a war together, you’re the only two people who’ve had similar life experiences vis-a-vis being super soldiers, you’ve been acclimating Bucky to twenty-first century life out of the goodness of your heart—”<br/>
<br/>
“Okay, I get it,” Steve says, holding up a hand. He looks pained, but not in the way broken people do. Clint’s seen old pictures of Steve, from before the serum, and even then, “fragile” would not be a word Clint would use to describe Steve. Steve wasn’t always able to dish it out, but he could always take it.<br/>
<br/>
“You and Bucky have to talk, alone,” Clint says firmly. “I’ll be there today, because I have my heart set on this Thai food, but after this, you’re on your own. Clint out.”<br/>
<br/>
“I wouldn’t ask any more of you,” Steve says, nodding.<br/>
<br/>
“Good. Good!” Clint says, signing the words at the same time. “C’mon, I’m starving.”<br/>
<br/>
Clint sends up a silent thanks that the restaurant is as close as it is—only a few blocks over and three up. It’s a hole in the wall, and Clint had stumbled upon it by accident the first time, but he keeps coming back. It’s good food.<br/>
<br/>
Steve and Bucky trail behind him, not saying much. They’re almost like ghosts—they might as well be ghosts, two relics of the 1930s, displaced from their time and stuck back in a city that wasn’t quite right. Clint doesn’t like to think about it. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he was in their places.<br/>
<br/>
Clint barely has to open his mouth before the man behind the partition says, “Pad thai?”<br/>
<br/>
Clint nods. He knows he’s a frequent flier, but he feels like he’s just been upgraded to “regular.” He turns to Bucky and Steve—the latter, squinting up at the menu close to the ceiling, and the former staring at the floor.<br/>
<br/>
“Two more,” Clint says, making an executive decision.<br/>
<br/>
“Hey,” Steve weakly protests.<br/>
<br/>
“You’re going to love it,” Clint promises. “And, you know what, two Thai iced teas for the big guys as well. All on me.”<br/>
<br/>
“You don’t have to do that,” Bucky mumbles.<br/>
<br/>
“Can’t hear you, I’m hearing impaired,” Clint says loudly in Bucky’s direction, and pays for everything.<br/>
<br/>
They sit at the counter, Clint on one end and Bucky on the other, with Steve looking uncomfortable in the middle. Clint all but ignores the other two—he’s <em>just</em> there to get Thai food, and he forced Bucky and Steve to come so that they would talk to each other again.<br/>
<br/>
<em>I deserve some sort of medal for this,</em> he thinks.<br/>
<br/>
They get their food before Bucky and Steve start talking, and the first thing Bucky says is, “You didn’t tell me it was spicy.” T<br/>
<br/>
his is followed by the sound of Bucky taking a quick gulp of his Thai iced tea, which is then followed by a, “And this is so <em>sweet.”</em><br/>
<br/>
Steve laughs. “Not so good with quick change, Buck?”<br/>
<br/>
“Oh, shut up. Quickest change of my life was you going from ninety-eight pounds to two hundred, and I adjusted just fine to that,” Bucky says. “Even waking up periodically in the future wasn’t as shocking as that.”<br/>
<br/>
“You know what they neglected to tell me when I woke up?” Steve says. “Two new states. There were two new states! Fifty states—ain’t that a nice, even number? Forty-eight on the continent, one way out in the Pacific Ocean, and one way up in the Yukon. Had to figure it out on my own when I saw a map for the first time.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky laughs. “What, you point to Hawaii and ask, ‘what the hell is this?’”<br/>
<br/>
“Essentially!”<br/>
<br/>
Clint grins into his pad thai, and he knows he did what needed to be done. Steve and Bucky are going to be fine.<br/>
<br/>
And if he notices them leaning against each other as they finish their lunch, and letting their gazes linger, and link their fingers together on the walk back to the tower, he doesn’t say anything.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<strong>138 West 72nd Street, New York, New York 10023</strong><br/>
<br/>
Bucky was taught that to keep pleasant company, you don’t discuss religion or politics. This was less of a lesson of keeping others at ease, and more a lesson of how to stay safe when there are people out there who want you and everyone like you dead. Religion and politics were both dinner table conversation, because the dinner table meant family, but they didn’t extend beyond that.<br/>
<br/>
Of course, putting him and Steve together, they look like the goddamn poster children of religion and politics.<br/>
<br/>
It isn’t a new revelation. They’ve always been volatile people by simply existing—Bucky more than Steve, but Steve was a Brooklyn boy, through and through. People wouldn’t say shit to Bucky without getting Steve’s sickly fist shoved down their throat. The serum only made it easier for Steve to <em>win</em> the fights he started.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky never felt like it was necessary to tell Steve he was gay on top of being a Jew. He got enough flack as it was in the 30s, and Steve was his best friend. Besides, his sexuality fell under the umbrella term of “politics,” and that was family dinner table conversation.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky doesn’t remember coming out to his mother, but he knows she knew. She gave him that hard, withering stare—the one that said <em>“I left the Old Country with my parents, I crossed the Atlantic for a nation that did not want us, and you, my son, are making our hard life a little more difficult.”</em> It hurt, but not as much as it could have. Bucky still had a roof over his head, and a family to eat dinner with, and a mother who would stand on her tiptoes to smooth down his hair.<br/>
<br/>
He tells his therapist that he thinks he misses mother more than anyone else. He doesn’t think he has the energy to look for her grave.<br/>
<br/>
“Your friend, Mr. Rogers, would help,” the therapist says. “I believe he would, from what you’ve told me about him.”<br/>
<br/>
<em>And because he used to be Captain America,</em> Bucky thinks to himself. It’s not the fault of the therapist—everyone knows what Steve did, both in the ‘40s and the present. Occupational hazard of being a former Hydra weapon in therapy.<br/>
<br/>
“He would,” Bucky agrees. That’s something his therapist has helped him with—answering suggestions, period, instead of just staring blankly. He likes the small talk. It makes him feel like a real person.<br/>
<br/>
“How have you and Mr. Rogers been?” The therapist asks. Bucky doesn’t like thinking about her as just “the therapist,” but he’s also not comfortable using her name. He thinks it’s a remnant of the Soldier still inside him, but it might as well be the soldier from WWII. Neither of them will be permanently removed from him.<br/>
<br/>
“Good,” he says, answering her question.<br/>
<br/>
“Is he still helping you with food?” She asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah,” Bucky says. “We had Italian the other day, and held hands. Clint made us get Thai with him yesterday, and we held hands then, too.” He blinks at her, slowly, waiting for a response, and when she just nods, he continues, “I don’t know what to do.”<br/>
<br/>
She nods again. “Have you spoken with Mr. Rogers about this?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky shakes his head, then remembers he’s trying to be more vocal, and says, “No.”<br/>
<br/>
“I think this is a conversation best had between you and Mr. Rogers,” the therapist says.<br/>
<br/>
Bucky knows he and Steve need to have a conversation, one without Clint or Sam or—God forbid—Tony acting as mediator. He’s not one to invite trouble in, though. He thinks that’s something that’s changed about him. He doesn’t find himself too broken up by the fact—besides, between the two of them, Steve was always better at getting his ass handed to him.<br/>
<br/>
“Have you suggested any types of food you’d like to try?” The therapist asks.<br/>
<br/>
“No,” Bucky says. “Steve knows what’s changed, and I just…follow.”<br/>
<br/>
“Mmm,” the therapist says. “I think you should find something you’d like to try, and ask Mr. Rogers to take you there. You could even go by yourself—”<br/>
<br/>
“No,” Bucky says sharply. “Not alone. Not yet.”<br/>
<br/>
The therapist nods once more. “Not off the table, just not yet?”<br/>
<br/>
“That’s right,” Bucky says. “Just not yet. I don’t—I can’t even think of something new I want to try.”<br/>
<br/>
“What about something old?” The therapist suggests. “A meal from your childhood, maybe.”<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t want any damn meals from my childhood if it ain’t my mother cooking them—” Bucky snaps, and he can hear the Brooklyn in him in that moment. He sinks into his chair, embarrassed by his flash of anger, but the therapist is unfazed.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s okay to be upset, though I certainly didn’t mean to upset you,” she says. “Not a meal from your childhood, then. Maybe something tangential—something in the same wheelhouse. Not fried rice, but lo mein. You understand?”<br/>
<br/>
“We’ve already had Chinese,” Bucky says, and the therapist laughs. He didn’t realize he was making a joke. It makes him feel warm inside. “I get what you mean. Not matzo ball soup, but…” He trails off, unable to think of anything.<br/>
<br/>
“Latkes,” the therapist suggests with a smile. “My husband makes amazing latkes.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky smiles as well. “My ma made great latkes, too.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky walks out of the session feeling more self-assured than he has in a week. He knocks on Steve’s door, beaming, and his smile only grows when Steve opens the door.<br/>
<br/>
“Bucky, you look like a maniac,” Steve says. “Is that supposed to be a grin?”<br/>
<br/>
“Punk,” Bucky says, not because it makes Steve smile, but because he is acting like a punk. “You’re taking me to a Jewish deli.”<br/>
<br/>
“I am?” Steve asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah, you are,” Bucky says. “Don’t tell me you don’t know any delis?”<br/>
<br/>
“In New York City?” Steve snorts. “I’m trying to narrow down my options, if anything.”<br/>
<br/>
“Well, when you decide, let me know. I’m hungry,” Bucky says.<br/>
<br/>
“Now?” Steve asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Yes, Captain Stupid, <em>now,”</em> Bucky says. “It’s lunchtime, isn’t it?”<br/>
<br/>
“Guess it is,” Steve says. “Well, if you’re hungry now, then how about we head down to Houston Street?”<br/>
<br/>
They hop on the local 6, Lower Manhattan bound. Bucky can tell Steve is a little unnerved by his attitude, but in the moment, he can’t bring himself to care. He’s excited to have deli food.<br/>
<br/>
The moment they reach the deli Steve has chosen, Bucky knows it’s not the right place.<br/>
<br/>
“No,” Bucky says. “Steve, I can’t, there are too many people.”<br/>
<br/>
“I swear, Buck, the food’s worth it—” Steve wheedles, but Bucky shakes his head.<br/>
<br/>
“I won’t do it. You said you had a list of delis, we’re going to a different one,” he says firmly.<br/>
<br/>
Steve sighs. “Alright. Okay.” He pauses. “You know, this is the deli in <em>When Harry Met Sally—”</em><br/>
<br/>
“I’m fine just seeing it in the pictures,” Bucky says. He doesn’t want to be around crowds of people. He doesn’t know how long his good mood is going to last, and the last thing he wants is to cause a scene around so many people.<br/>
<br/>
Steve leads them back to the subway, and they walk away from Katz’s, past the Broadway-Lafayette stop they just came up from, and keep walking until they reach a C train station.<br/>
<br/>
“We’re going up to Central Park,” Steve says. “This other place—it’s smaller, quieter. Closed on Saturdays, and proper Kosher. They don’t even serve meat and cheese together.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky nods, eyebrows raised. <em>“Proper</em> proper Kosher.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve talks—Steve has always talked. He talks to fill up the silence. He talks to change the world.<br/>
<br/>
He talks to Bucky.<br/>
<br/>
“I found this place on accident, actually. Same reason you didn’t like Katz’s—too crowded, too many people,” he says. “I was taking a run through Central Park, and there were these two little old ladies—and I’m talking <em>little</em> old ladies, with shawls and big purses and black dresses—and I thought, hell, if anyone knows a good place to eat, it’s gotta be them, right?”<br/>
<br/>
“They were probably our age,” Bucky says, snorting.<br/>
<br/>
“Maybe so, but they get the advantage of looking like that,” Steve says. “They were, ah—shoot, what did you call them? Babkas?”<br/>
<br/>
“Babushkas, or bubbes, maybe,” Bucky corrects automatically. “Babka’s a food.”<br/>
<br/>
“Dictionary definition of babushkas,” Steve says. “Anyway, I ask them, and Buck, their accents—“awv causs, dare-ay, theah’s a place down da street”—”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky laughs, despite himself. “You’ve got no place to judge! That’s what we sounded like!”<br/>
<br/>
“Like a breath of fresh air, they were,” Steve says. “So I followed their directions, and—well, here we have it.”<br/>
<br/>
He gestures upward, and beyond the construction scaffolding, Bucky can make out the lettering of “Fine &amp; Schapiro.”<br/>
<br/>
“Fine and Schapiro?” Bucky asks.<br/>
<br/>
“Come on,” Steve says, and opens the door for him. It’s nearly deserted—an old man in the corner, the people behind the counter. It’s just what Bucky wanted.<br/>
<br/>
They’re seated at a booth by an older woman, who moments after seating them, brings out a bowl of pickles. Steve grabs one automatically and bites down on it.<br/>
<br/>
It’s not what Bucky expected. It’s perfect anyway.<br/>
<br/>
“So,” Bucky says, picking up his own pickle and biting into it. It’s cool, and sour, and tangy. “Us.”<br/>
<br/>
“Us,” Steve echoes, and clears his throat. “I don’t want to force you into anything you don’t want, Buck.”<br/>
<br/>
“You think you could force me into anything?” Bucky asks. He would laugh if Steve didn’t look so heart-breakingly concerned. “Stevie, Hydra couldn’t use my old brain because no matter what they put me through, they couldn’t force me to be their good little assassin. They didn’t break me—they <em>erased</em> me. And you think you, Steve Rogers, one of the kindest people on this godforsaken planet, could force me into a loving relationship with you?”<br/>
<br/>
Steve looks at the table. He won’t meet Bucky’s eyes.<br/>
<br/>
“Christ,” Bucky sighs, and starts on another pickle.<br/>
<br/>
“Lord’s name,” Steve protests weakly, a small smile on his face to show his insincerity.<br/>
<br/>
“Lord’s name, my ass,” Bucky says. “Not like the terrible Catholic across from me actually cares.”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m a good Catholic!” Steve objects, and Bucky snorts.<br/>
<br/>
“I’m a better Jew than you are a Catholic,” he says flatly. “And I am a <em>bad</em> Jew, Steve. You hear about the country of Israel? I didn’t, not until Tony was talkin’ about when he was still in the weapons business, and I asked him how he was selling to a nation two thousand years gone.”<br/>
<br/>
“Not so bad a Jew. Killed a few Nazis in your time,” Steve offers. “And you’re here, aren’t you?”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky does look around at the moment—at the man in the corner, with his yarmulke, and the staff at the counter talking in low voices in a language Bucky knows he knows, but can’t hear. He looks back at Steve—Steve, who’s about as goyishe as they come. Bucky thinks he may be tearing up.<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t even remember my fucking name,” he says, and his voice breaks. He wipes the wetness from his eyes, because he isn’t sad, he’s <em>furious.</em> “Steven Grant Rogers, when you were confirmed, I folded my hands even though I was supposed to cross my arms, and I took your Catholic communion. It was one of the vilest things I’ve ever eaten, and I remember thinking, ‘when we have the matzo and the charoset and the bitter herbs, it’s to remind us that we suffered before and we’ll suffer again, but this is suffering with no point.’ I never told you that because I thought it would hurt your feelings.”<br/>
<br/>
Steve does meet Bucky’s eyes, and Bucky has to wipe at them again.<br/>
<br/>
“Your confirmation name was Sebastian,” Bucky continues. “Your mother almost had a cow, because she wanted you to choose St. Stephen, but you had to choose the guy who was martyred with arrows instead of a simple stoning.”<br/>
<br/>
“He was the patron saint of athletes,” Steve says, voice trembling. “I thought he’d bring me good luck.”<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t remember the name my own mother gave me but I remember Saint <em>fucking</em> Sebastian,” Bucky spits out.<br/>
<br/>
“Yakov Binyamin,” Steve whispers, and Bucky almost doesn’t hear it.<br/>
<br/>
“What?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yakov Binyamin,” Steve repeats, a little louder, though his voice wavers. “James Buchanan Barnes. Yakov Binyamin. Your sister was Rivkah. I don’t remember her middle name, but I remember yours. Yakov Binyamin.”<br/>
<br/>
“Yakov Binyamin,” Bucky repeats breathlessly. “That’s me.”<br/>
<br/>
“That’s you,” Steve says, and Bucky can see tears in his eyes, too. If Bucky’s an angry crier, then Steve’s a happy one.<br/>
<br/>
<em>That’s me. That’s my name.</em><br/>
<br/>
“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky begins, wiping away the last of the tears from his face. “How does a bowl of matzo ball soup sound right now?”<br/>
<br/>
Steve laughs through his tears. “You know what, Bucky, matzo ball soup sounds <em>fantastic.”</em><br/>
<br/>
When they both have their soup, when Bucky is marveling at the celery and carrots and noodles and chicken and big, fat matzo ball in the center and thinking he will never stop missing his mother but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy her food, Steve looks up at him.<br/>
<br/>
“And us?” He asks. Bucky smiles.<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says. “I don’t think you could get rid of me if you wanted, punk. I don’t think I’m gonna stop loving you anytime soon.”<br/>
<br/>
“I think I’ve loved you for awhile,” Steve says thoughtfully. “I think I loved you before I went into the ice.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky swallows dryly. “I think I loved you before the Soldier. I think the love was the hardest thing for them to try to erase.”<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t think they erased it.”<br/>
<br/>
Bucky smiles, feeling more whole than he ever has, and eats his soup.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<em>I love you. I want us both to eat well. </em><br/>
<br/>
<em>                         - Christopher Citro</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Edit 08/30/2020: If you can donate or you live in the city, Punjabi Deli (114 E. 1st street) is struggling to recover after being closed for four months because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  Their GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-new-york039s-beloved-punjabi-deli/share?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=instagram&amp;utm_campaign=p_nacp+share-sheet</p></blockquote></div></div>
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